If you could un-invent something, what would it be? Discuss why, potential repercussions, or a possible alternative.

(This is my second post today on the Daily Prompt, I misread the first one.)

I’m not going to be terribly inventive when it comes to what I’d like to un-invent; it would be the cell phone and surveillance camera.

Forget about all the crap you’ve been told about how it has made our life more convenient. It has been a giant-size pain in the toucus and you know it.

There has been 6,000 years of recorded human history without the cell phone. Good lord! How did we do without it?

I’m not going to mention the macabre; all car accidents and such. (But I just did.)

Whenever my phone rings it is always bad news. “Hey, we’re just around the corner. Okay if we drop by?” In the old days they would have had to call from home; plenty of time for me to get in my car and get lost.

People sometimes use them for directions. You’re in strange town to visit someone and get lost, so you call them. I think it’s great we get lost every now and then. It sharpens our skills and teaches us how to read a map – remember them? They are the large pieces of paper that were never folded the same way twice.

When at the grocery I call home and ask my wife, “What kind of yoghurt did you want?” Gone are the days of surprise yoghurt and returning to the grocery for what you forgot.

And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of surveillance cameras. There are times I want to scratch or pick certain portions of my body in private. I go down the canned vegetable aisle (hardly anybody goes there anymore); make sure nobody is looking and scratch or pick. Then I look up. There is one of those little black bulbs looking at me. I just know somebody is either having a good time or just plain grossed-out.